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lentils

I think I made White Chicken Chili almost every week since we’ve been home from Hawaii. It’s such an easy meal to make, it’s cheap, fast, healthy and easy to leave on the stove until Eric comes home from work.

But this can’t go on forever.

Instead, I tried to be resourceful with what I had in the kitchen and ended up with a new cheap, fast and healthy recipe!

I started off with sauteing a little garlic in a little EVOO and a 1:1 ratio of chicken broth and almond milk heating up in the bottom of a skillet. I added sliced chicken breasts and slowly simmered. Then I added a little freshly ground pepper, sea salt, cayenne, and a spoonful of flour to thicken the broth/milk mixture into a sauce.

The great thing about this dish is that you can incorporate any kind of vegetable you might have on-hand. I added a bag of frozen broccoli florets, covered and left to slowly simmer.

I’m rekindling my love and appreciation for lentils as a cheap and easy carb alternative. Red lentils are especially easy to cook like you would cook pasta; big pot of boiling water, ten minutes, strain, the end. Easy.

This dish is just a basic format to the start of any kind of simmering chicken and veggies. You could kick up the heat with (my go-to ingredient) Sriracha, turn it into a curry by substituting the almond milk for coconut milk and adding curry powder, or you could get a little more gourmet and saute onions with the garlic and finish the dish with some freshly chopped thyme.

The key to “inventing” recipes is to get a hold of a basic format for the execution and then to get creative with the different flavors and elements you’ll be incorporating. It’s like alternative cooking – take a traditional recipe, choose alternative healthy ingredients and then a complementary flavor profile.